Mid-December is not a great time to start a diet. Between holiday parties, eggnog, sweets and “just one more piece” of pecan pie, losing weight this time of year is nearly impossible. Many of us at InventHelp don’t have the iron will to shed pounds during the holidays, but we do know of one invention that makes a perfect gift for the aspiring health guru on your list: the Diet Plate.

Do you know someone who knows the right foods to eat, but just eats too much of them? This InventHelp girl can certainly be guilty of this one, especially around the holidays when second helpings lead to third helpings. The Diet Plate®, a British-based company, offers a number of portion-controlling plates and cereal bowls for everyday use.

The Diet Plate provides measured sectioned or calibrated areas for the various types of food that make up our daily diet, such as protein, starchy carbohydrates, vegetables, dairy and fat. Dieters can still eat many of their favorite foods, but the plate encourages users to eat controlled portions to reduce calorie intake. Now, if your favorite foods are chocolate cake and potato chips, you may need to make some lifestyle changes!

A gender-specific bowl and plate system runs about $65, although there are holiday sales in progress now. Combining the Diet Plate system with the 8-week weight management course from Club Diet Plate helps to maximize the weight-loss benefits.

Think how much easier your health nut’s New Year’s weight-loss resolution will be to reach with your help and this invention gift!

If there’s one thing InventHelp’s Invention Girl loves, it’s cheap airline tickets. For the past few weeks, I’ve been shopping for airfare for an old friend’s wedding. And every time I shop, I go through the same predicament. Do I buy now or wait to see if fares drop?

Due to this internal strife, a commercial for Bing.com, Microsoft’s recently-launched search engine, piqued my interest last week. The commercial featured Bing Travel’s 7-day Price Predictor, an invention that helps frugal travelers figure out if it’s best to buy or wait.

The site combines elements from the Microsoft-owned travel site, Farecast – which now redirects to Bing Travel – and sprinkles in some editorial news from MSN Travel (MSN Travel now also redirects to Bing Travel). Using Farecast technology, the site analyzes more than 175 billion airfare observations and predicts whether the price of a flight is going up or down. It includes a confidence percentage regarding a cost increase or decrease over the next seven days.

For extra funs and giggles, Bing allows travelers to search multiple travel sites like Hotwire and Expedia simultaneously, a feature I enjoy with search engine Kayak.com. And since prices tend to fall quickly and not for long, you can sign up for Fare Alerts so that you can jump on the price when it plummets. Globetrotters who need hotel accommodations can take advantage of the Hotel Rate Indicator, which uses science rather than marketing to help travelers determine if a flight/hotel combo is really a good deal.

Today, Bing tells me to wait – they’re 80% confident that prices will remain steady or drop. I’ll check back to see if their crystal ball speaks the truth, but so far I’m loving this price indicator. If they’re right and it saves me a few bucks, InventHelp’s Invention Girl will be “Bada Bing” all the way!

Breaking up may be hard to do, but it doesn’t have to be hard on your pocketbook! InventHelp’s Invention Girl has discovered a new website that can help newly single, entrepreneurial gals to shed their ex-boyfriend baggage and make a few bucks on the side.

Sure, trinkets and mementos from love lost can be hard to let go. InventHelp’s Invention Girl won’t go into gory details, but let’s just say I’ve had a few teary sessions with a pint of ice cream while listening to the local light FM radio station! But after a while, rings, bracelets, watches and other fine jewelry from the ex can lose sentimental value and instead bring on painful memories. So, why not trade them in for a big, fat check?

OutOfYourLife.com will send lovelorn ladies an official “Break-Up Box” (the interior is lined with the words “You’re Better Off”), which can then be filled with gifts from He Who Shall Not Be Named and sent off in a pre-paid envelope. Outofyourlife.com will send a check for the value of the goods, which can be used to buy brand new jewelry (or more ice cream).

Blog readers: Do you think this website invention devalues a relationship or exploits a guy? Certainly these are questions to be considered. The way InventHelp’s Invention Girl sees it, break-ups are highly personal and complex, and there’s more than one way to deal with the pain. The more inventions to help folks deal with it, the better!

InventHelp’s Invention Girl has a new favorite weekend hobby – strolling Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods for the various food trucks. These mobile restaurants tend to be no larger than a closet, yet they pack huge portions of amazing cuisine from around the world for just a few bucks.

Food carts are exploding in popularity, and that’s in no small way thanks to the invention of Twitter. In Los Angeles, Kogi BBQ trucks have tweeted their way into the mainstream. Kogi’s unique Korean-Mexican fusion has earned a reputation among foodies all across the country, which is no small feat for a few trucks selling Korean tacos.

No one knows who tweeted first, but now many food trucks send daily tweets to hoards of devotees to announce specials for the day (think “grilled asparagus with yellow nectarines and sesame seeds”).

The fun part is that food fans have to be in the know to order the daily specials. They’re nowhere to be found on the menu. Call it the thrill of the chase or the thrill of preferential treatment, but these carts keep things exciting for their customers and secure repeat business.

If the food carts aren’t tweeting, you can bet their customers are! In Portland, Ore., where food carts have grown from a few in 2006 to more than 170 this year, foodies send reviews and recommendations to other hungry subscribers. One user said, “My friend Michelle can’t stop raving about Persad, the juice cart! I’m heading up to Grilled Cheese Grill myself tonight.”

InventHelp’s Invention Girl certainly understands the thrill of the hunt, even if it’s just the hunt for dinner. Do you have a favorite food cart in your city? If so, consider tweeting to spread the word!

Can’t get enough of Twitter? Be sure to visit our InventHelp page for updates from “The Invent Help People”!

Call the plasma TV yet another victim of the recession. Last week, electronics retailer Pioneer announced that it would cease production on its flashiest plasma model, the “Ultimate Black” Kuro, and phase out its critically acclaimed television division by March 2010.

Pioneer’s move looks like a final nail in the coffin for the struggling plasma TV industry. The popularity of plasma steadily declined in the last few years, mainly from competition from LCD TV and tightening family budgets. At the beginning of this year, LCDs were outselling plasmas by a ratio of 8-to-1 globally.

Plasma’s popularity peaked from 2004-2006 when they largely replaced big-screen, rear-projecting televisions. But even in good times, plasma didn’t necessarily excel. Competition from LCD models led many consumers to hold off on making a purchase, during which time LCD technology started to catch up with plasma. By 2008, LCD was cheaper, the screen quality comparable to plasma, and sizes and features formerly available only in plasma were now offered in LCD.

With Pioneer out of the (ahem!) picture, Panasonic, LG, and Samsung are the last plasma makers on the playing field. Panasonic in particular may benefit from Pioneer’s demise. They plan to offer plasma TVs as a premium, niche item for devoted customers. This also buys Panasonic time to get their LCD line up to speed when the imminent death of plasma hits once and for all.

Although it’s sad to see a technological superstar like Kuro fall by the wayside, tough times mean that the best-of-the-best isn’t always what’s best for consumers. And in case you were curious, InventHelp’s Invention Girl is LCD all the way!

Although it may not be immediately obvious, book worms and tech geeks have a lot in common (and there are plenty of both here at InventHelp, myself included!). They share of love of learning. Both have an appreciation for the arts. Now their words are coming closer than ever as e-book sales explode in a generally flat book market.

InventHelp’s Invention Girl likes to think that she transcends labels like “book worm” and “tech geek,” but admittedly I could be labeled as a little of both! I love a good novel just as much as I love the latest gadgets, albeit for different reasons. Luckily for folks like me, Random House Inc. plans to expand its digital book library by thousands this year.

Random House CEO Markus Dohle said in a statement that “more people everyday are enjoying reading in the electronic format and Random House wants to extend our reach to them with more of our books.”

Random House’s library is already about 8,000 strong, and they plan to beef it up to 15,000 in the coming months. Although they make up a tiny percentage of the market, e-book sales have shown triple-digit increases in sales in 2008.You can search for titles on Insight, Random House’s digital search and browsing service.

You mean I can enjoy my love of literature while nursing my affection for electronics? Someone pinch me – I must be dreaming!

Were you one of the many shoppers who hit the pavement at 5 a.m. for those Black Friday deals? We at InventHelp love good bargains on the newest gadgets, but the holiday shopping frenzy can be little much. Rather than trudging from store to store in huge crowds to search for that perfect gift, going the easy route with a gift card sounds pretty tempting.

For lazy or uncreative shoppers, gift cards might be the best holiday invention in recent years. They’re simple to use, easy to find and don’t require much thought. You don’t have to worry about buying the wrong color or size. But, does all this convenience come at a price?

In today’s shaky economy, some experts warn that gift cards might be a risky buy. If a store goes out of business, a gift card turns into a useless piece of plastic. And although they might seem handier than cash, bank cards are often laden with hidden fees for everything from customer service support to non-activity charges.

You might be surprised to learn that gift card holders lost an estimated $100 million dollar last year. Most of these losses came at a handful of big name retailers who went out of business. And this year, who knows how many businesses will ultimately fold? Even InventHelp’s Invention Girl was burned when a $75 gift certificate for a bike store suddenly became a useless piece of paper when the business went under.

This holiday season, avoid the gift cards and use your creativity when gift shopping this year. In the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing my tech picks for this holiday season. So if you need some help, just stop back and visit the blog – your one-stop shop for holiday gift ideas!

Poor Vista. Cleverly mocked by rival Mac in its famous PC vs. Mac ads and maligned by PC users, Vista looked good on paper but hasn’t been embraced by the PC public. Even InventHelp’s Invention Girl is holding on to XP for dear life.

Part of the problem, Microsoft admits, is that the changes Vista brought looked good to developers but were not tested by everyday users. “We had all the best intentions of helping to secure the PC platform even more, particularly for novice PC users who needed to be protected,” Steven Sinofsky, a senior vice president in Microsoft’s Windows group, told MSNBC.

The problem is that most users view this “protection” as “nagging.” Windows 7, the forthcoming operating system, will let users choose to receive fewer alerts and pop-ups that warn of potential security dangers. Hoping to avoid a repeat mistake, Microsoft is committed to having real PC users test this system.

Other new features include the removal of redundant buttons, reintroducing XP user favorites that Vista had eliminated, and revamping the task bar to make jumping between documents and files easier.

Plus, they’re developing technology to allow their popular Office Suite to be used in a web browser. This change was spurred because Google and other competitors have released free web-based word processing programs that are cutting into Microsoft’s profits.

Microsoft will begin testing on PC users as early as next year. Once it arrives, InventHelp and Invention Girl will be here to put Windows 7 to the test!

The microwave is one of those inventions that most people take for granted in today’s modern world. Here at InventHelp, there can be a lunchtime line for the microwave on any given day. While no one’s arguing the usefulness of the microwave, a new government campaign is encouraging lunch zappers to double check their cooking times or pay for it with food sickness.

After 32 people in 12 states were sickened with salmonella poisoning, the feds are encouraging everyone to thoroughly cook frozen chicken dinners or any other dish with raw ingredients. In fact, food safety experts say that microwaving is best for reheating rather than cooking. Because microwaves cook food unevenly, it can leave cold spots in the food that harbor bacteria.

InventHelp’s Invention Girl thought that microwave foods were generally precooked and needed only to be warmed up. Plus, microwaves lose power over time, and some smaller microwaves may not produce enough power to safely cook some products.

Using a food thermometer is the best way to ensure that foods are properly cooked. If this idea seems a little far-fetched, try avoiding raw meat in microwaved foods. InventHelp’s Invention Girl is a big fan of Amy’s Frozen Foods, which invented a line of organic, vegetarian meals that include everything from comfort foods like veggie pot pies to exotic choices like Indian Palak Paneer (a spinach and cheese dish).

Using great inventions like the microwave correctly help keep science and technology running smoothly. They say there’s “no such thing as bad publicity”, but InventHelp’s Invention Girl isn’t buying that!

Maryland residents have good reason to celebrate: XOHM, the next generation mobile broadband that allows users to enjoy the internet from anywhere in their XOHM coverage area, is hitting Baltimore on Oct. 8.

XOHM is Sprint’s latest crack at a WiMax network, and it promises to be to be faster than 3G networks and provide download speeds of 2 to 4 megabits downstream. InventHelp’s Invention Girl loves her hometown of Pittsburgh, but I’ll admit that I’m a little jealous of Baltimore!

Laptop manufacturers have plans to release new models with integrated WiMax chipsets, making it easy for users to jump on to the WiMax network city-wide. If everything goes according to plan, WiMax could provide to be a formidable foe for broadband providers like the cable company.

Setting up a reliable wireless network in a city landscape can be challenging, but we at InventHelp are looking forward to seeing if XOHM lives up to its potential. XOHM is launching in Chicago and Washington D.C. in 2008 as well. InventHelp and Invention Girl will keep you posted!